Flat Earth Society is Dimentia 13’s pop album. It was 1989 and I had been making Dimentia 13 records for five years. Two years before the first Dimentia 13 release I’d been a member of the hardcore punk band Zero Defex who had also been on a few compilation albums. After seven years in the music business at age 25 I had yet to be able to earn anything close to a living wage and I was getting desperate. It’s amazing how old you can feel at 25.

In spite of being known as a hardcore punk guy in Zero Defex and a psychedelic dude in Dimentia 13, I had always been interested in pure pop music for its own sake. In those days I wrote songs constantly. When preparing the Dimentia 13 records I tended to pick the most psychedelic pieces from among the dozens of demos I made each year. Or else I’d dress up the pop songs I wrote in psychedelic clothing, adding vintage Farfisa organs or Mellotrons or fuzztone guitars to disguise the goofball pop songs underneath. Which is what most of the original psychedelic bands of the Sixties did anyway.

By the late 80s a lot of vaguely psychedelic and overtly Sixties inspired bands were selling records and getting noticed by the emerging “alternative” scene — bands like REM, Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians, The Stone Roses, and a boatload of others now long since forgotten. I wanted a piece of that action. So I decided to tone down those elements I felt were tying Dimentia 13 to the narrow confines of garage/psych revival scene. There would be no Mellotrons or Farfisa organs, no sitars or backwards tapes, the fuzztone guitars would take on a more contemporary sound, and I would admit musical influences and lyrical references from after 1967.

I also worked out a new guitar sound I was particularly proud of. I bought a giant red hollow bodied Eko guitar, made in Italy in the late Sixties and plugged it into both a bass and a guitar amp at the same time, added some vintage spring reverb and turned it up to seventeen. In the studio it sounded amazing. Unfortunately that sound didn’t transfer well to tape. You get a hint of how awesome it was on the James Bond theme-inspired riffing of album’s first song Can This Be True Love but elsewhere it gets lost.

The band on this album was me on lead vocals and lead guitar, Jeff Lisk on drums, Joe Nofziger on bass, and Louanne Varholick on vocals and keyboards. Jeff was a hot shit drummer in Chicago at the time. He was very good and he knew it. His playing on the record is really sharp and precise, but it's a little too clean for my tastes these days. Joe had been my best friend since seventh grade and kindly drove all the way up to Milwaukee from Columbus, Ohio to play on the album. Louanne had been the bassist on the previous album, Disturb The Air. But she was a better keyboard player and singer so I had her do what she did best instead of being hampered with the bass, which she was never all that enthusiastic about. The musicianship on this album is far tighter and more professional than on the previous Dimentia 13 records.

I hoped the resulting album would help me break out of the tight bound confines of the pysch genre and maybe even make some money. In the end, though, it didn’t sell any better than the previous Dimentia 13 records. In fact, it did a little worse than the albums that came before. In the end, it was the final album I put out on Midnight Records.

It took me a long time to start liking this album again. At the time of its release I thought it was great. But when it met with poor sales and critical indifference I started looking at it as a failure, a reminder of a bad time in my life and a misguided attempt to sell out and be commercial. Nowadays I can listen to it and enjoy it, but for years I couldn’t.

These days I sometimes play a couple songs from this album when I give talks about my books. Buddha Was A Good Ol' Boy always gets a laugh and God Pt. III, which I also play at speaking gigs sometimes, is a prototype for some of the topics I write about these days. In fact the lyrics on most of the album are really philosophical and very much inspired by the Zen training I’d been going through for close to a decade by then.

Here to tempt you into buying the album are two tracks that I had intended to include as bonus tracks on the download. I’m not sure why I didn’t. I think I just spaced out and forgot to send them to the people at Smog Veil Records who arranged the download. The good news is that you now can have them absolutely free of charge. Hopefully they will act like the first taste of crack a dealer gives you and make you need to buy the rest.

SKULL SHININGThis instrumental was meant to be a bonus track on the original CD release. But it never made it on there and I don’t remember why. It’s based on a riff I once heard the Meat Puppets play. It’s also the most overtly psychedelic song recorded during the album sessions. So maybe that’s why it was left off. I like it a lot now and if I could I would make this the first song on the album.

TELL ME WHERE SHE’S GONEThis is probably the most overtly pop song recorded for the album. Again, I don’t recall why it was dropped. In fact, I didn’t even remember recording it for the album until I found it on a cassette about a year ago. I remember thinking at the time I wrote the song that it had the potential to become a college radio hit. So why would I have left it off the record? Who knows? Anyway, I was especially proud of ripping off one of the riffs from the 70s prog rock masterpiece Hocus Pocus by the Dutch band Focus in the middle section.

This was the final album I recorded as Dimentia 13 for Midnight Records. It was never released by them, though, because I had a huge argument with the record label. I felt like I deserved to be treated better. In retrospect they treated me pretty fairly. It’s just that they were never very open with me about what they were doing. Whatever.

I remember trying to correct some of the mistakes I’d made on Flat Earth Society with this record. I was no longer so obsessed with making a contemporary sounding album. So some of the overtly psychedelic sounds I’d eliminated on Flat Earth Society are allowed to return. The result is a much more balanced album. It’s still more of a pop album than the early Dimentia 13 records. But it’s truer to what I really wanted to hear.

Because of the disputes with Midnight Records, this album was never really finished. I made a mix that I submitted to Midnight. But it was awful. I was trying to recapture the sound that Glen Rehse had created when he produced the Disturb The Air album. But I didn’t really know how he accomplished it. So I just overloaded every track with reverb and echo until the whole thing sounded like it had been recorded in a cave. It was a murky depressing sound and for years I thought of this as a murky depressing album.

Then late in 2009 when I was cleaning out some old boxes I came across a cassette of rough mixes for the album. These were created as reference mixes to guide in making the final mixes later. I told the engineer to simply make all of the tracks we recorded audible and not add any effects. When I listened to these again I discovered that the album itself was not murky and depressing at all. It was just all that reverb and shit I added on later.

For the currently available download version, I used these rough mixes and ran them through a digital mixing system to bring out some of the nuances. The only song on which I used the mix I had considered “final” back in 1991 was Anjalina. The rest are rough mixes.

The band on this album was the live version of Dimentia 13 as it existed in 1991. I sang lead vocals and tortured the guitars. Joe Nofziger, my best friend since seventh grade plays bass and sings backing vocals, and Steve McKee, once the drummer of my favorite Akron-based punk band The F-Models plays drums.

The lyrics are a kind of autobiographical rock opera about my return to Akron after three years in Chicago. But that would have been such an incredibly mundane subject for a rock opera that I never let anyone know that’s what it was. The Pamela Song is about a girl I dated in Akron. The Calico Girl in the song of that name is someone I left behind in Chicago. That same girl is also the subject of Panther.

Anjalina isn’t about a girl at all, but is about my friend Jim Bradler who had died a few years before very suddenly when he was only 25 years old. The song lists off a whole string of phrases he used to say, like “give me her number.”

Precious One is my attempt at writing a Badfinger song. But I was too embarrassed to use the original heart-on-my-sleeve romantic lyrics I’d written and instead wrote a bunch of psychedelic sounding nonsense. Love Song '73 was my attempt to write the kind of song The Partridge Family might have played in 1973. Again it’s about someone I knew. Walk Like An Insect contains my poor attempt to do a rap about the then-current state of the country. Another Song About Heaven is a parody of the band Warrant, who were huge at the time. The reason I wrote a Warrant parody is because Joe had been in a band called Blu whose drummer Steve Chamberlin had moved to California and joined Warrant. We’d both been friends with Steve and were kind of amazed by this.

Honey I'm Your Ghost was an attempt to write a Cramps song. Lux Interior was from Akron. Smash Your Head was about the frustrations of trying to make it in the music business. Somehow all of this stuff related to Akron and what was happening in my life there at the time.

I still really like this album. I know it sounds egotistical to give your own record a glowing review. But I was trying to write and record songs that I personally liked. So, of course I’m gonna like them! But I feel like this is a happy, upbeat album even though some of the specific subject matter is not. It’s an album about fighting the good fight even when you feel like you’re probably going to lose in the end.

Here is my favorite song from the MOTH LP, available for free on this here blog to hopefully make you feel guilty enough to buy the rest:

If Jundo starts an objective, autonomous board of directors/oversight committee then something good has come of this.

I'm not really holding my breath though. Filling such positions with a bunch of Treeleafers who want to please Jundo or have shown themselves to be good little soldiers is not gonna cut it, imo.

then

jundo cohen said...

Well, as the "outside independent member", I would like to offer a seat to my brother Brad, if he would have it. Seriously, I cannot think of anyone who would be a better candidate for that, and it would be a great bridge so that people can see that the things between him and me were a tempest in a teapot. So, consider it hereby officially offered, and I ask you to talk with him about it and see if you can get him to accept. He would not have to be involved in monitoring every post, but any member could write to him with a complaint and he would investigate and write about it as he wishes. I think it a nice idea. Please talk with him about it, as it is a serious offer.

If not, I will try to find an unrelated, respected Zen teacher (not related to Genpo! :-) )who might step in in that role.

I will keep you informed of how the rest of the board is set up, and I expect you will post about it.

Taigu posted this on the treeleaf site. - [Taigu, teacher at Treeleaf Sangha, was born in 1964, started Zazen early and received Shukke Tokudo in 1983 at age 18 from Rev. Mokudo Zeisler of the Deshimaru Lineage. Received Dharma Transmission from Chodo Cross in 2003. Now resides in Osaka, Japan.]

This seems odd.. at least to me, that Mike Cross, who was basically told by Jundo Cohen that he needed psychiatric care after he was booted out of Dogen Sangha, decides that Pierre Turler has what it takes to be a teacher in his former teacher's tradition. Then Pierre partners up with the same Jundo Cohen at Treeleaf after Jundo is booted from DS. Does this make any sense at all? Why did Taigu go to Mike Cross for his transmission and Jundo Cohen for students? If this was a job resume I wouldn't hire him.

Jundo! Have you lost your mind? Why are you always posting your personal things in this blog?Collecting soldiers? Lost Brads email-adress?You got dharma-transmission? For what? Holding Nishijimas hand, when he signed the documents?Man, even Seagal Rinpoche is a little more joyful than you.Try to be diplomatic or diplomatic, but not diplomatic.

I just had a nice chat with Chet. He said I could discuss this subject here, because he does all the time ... including on this thread. He has a little condition, all his life (borderline personality disorder) in which his thoughts get very stormy and he reacts to people a bit aggressively, says things, judges situations in ways that may alienate others. He himself sees this later, when the attack passes, although he may not at the time.

"Buddhism ia based in the psychological grammar that says we cannot eliminate the so-called negative forces of afflictive emotions. The only way to work with them is to encounter them directly, enter their world, and transform them. Thus, according to Buddhist psychology, anger can be transformed into mirrorlike wisdom or clarity; pride can be transformed into equalizing or equanimity and generosity; desire can be transformed into discriminating wisdom or discernment; jealousy can be transformed into unhindered wisdom or enlightened activity; and ignorance can be transformed into the wisdom of our True Nature, or clear and energetic intelligence."Exerpt from: The fruitful darkness by Joan Halifax

I find that kids, up to a certain age (sometimes 9, sometimes 90), are much more direct and honest than 'hope'. I find that they just want things straight away and if they can't get 'em straight away, rather than hang around pissing everybody off with their wonderful, elaborate 'hopes' (that are just extended, complicated 'wants'?) they bawl their eyes out, stamp their feet, scream and shout, call us adults evil, hurtful bastards... and then just get over it.

Back in the cassette culture days I used to write reviews of all kinds of independent musical releases for SOUND CHOICE and OPTION mags. If I couldn't find a way to say something nice about the tunes, I would always find something to compliment the musicians on, knowing myself how much blood sweat and tears goes into recording. In that vein, I have to say that the album cover artwork on both Flat Earth Society and Moth is excellent!

It involves koans and the role of the language/expression of realisation and non-realisation. Rinz, you might get a kick out of it, seeing two Sotoist ley bums floundering around like hapless self appointed Zen authorities.

You wrote: "He has a little condition, all his life (borderline personality disorder) in which his thoughts get very stormy and he reacts to people a bit aggressively, says things, judges situations in ways that may alienate others. He himself sees this later, when the attack passes, although he may not at the time."

That describes my condition too. I have post-trauma stress-condition which is essentially a disregulation of the part of my nervous system I can't control. It resulted from experiencing some significant physical injuries from accidents in childhood. Although I'm now receiving therapy, when my system is 'activated' by a stressful event I charge up with energy and become disconnected from how my body feels. I also interpret things suspiciously, act more aggressively, and say and do things I wish I didn't, etc. Later I will 'collapse' with exhaustion and feel unmotivated for extended periods.

I don't know if your friend has the same condition, but from your description that person might be interested to read about the kind of therapy I am receiving:

I find Babs assertion that you shouldn't read sutras without an advanced zen person to guide you a little odd. This is exactly what many fundamentalist christians say about the bible. Reading it on your own may even lead you to unbelief, so you should have a theologian or preacher standing by to interpret everything for you so that you don't misunderstand. Presumably we need a mullah handy before we can read the quran too. Perhaps we need a genuine advanced communist available before we read the works of Marx and Engels. So you need an orthodox soto zennist standing over your shoulder telling you exactly what Dogen meant by xy or z.

I don't buy it. I do think a strong zen practice is important to understand either the sutras or writings of any old master, including Dogen. But to suggest it requires someone to interpret it so that there's no misunderstanding seems to enforce orthodoxy to the nth degree. Perhaps the 'adnvanced zen person' herself has misunderstood the whole point of a text. Who gets to determine who is advanced or who has misunderstood? I keep expecting Babs to say; "Ahhh Grasshopper..."

When Xuefeng resided at Dongshan [monastery], he served as cook. One day when he was sifting rice [master] Dongshan asked him, "Are you sifting the sand and removing the rice, or sifting the rice and removing the sand?" Xuefeng said, "Sand and rice are simultaneously removed." Dongshan asked, "What will the great assembly eat?" Xuefeng overturned the bowl. Dongshan said, "In the future you will go and be scrutinized by someone else."

Delusion mixed with realization. Defilement with purity. Throwing them both out and overturning the bowl sounds like a good zen answer but it points to an attachment to emptiness, a one-sided view. Such a throwing away leaves no way for buddha to actually function and save all beings. What will the community eat? The adept must be able to drink the milk and leave the poison though they are mixed in one bowl.

In your three posts in this blog you are critical of three different people. Telling Brad his music isn't that great, telling Harry he has too much time on his hands, and telling Rinz the one true way to read....

"Beware of those who manufacture final answers as they go along, of those who will catch you on their catch-phrases and let you perish in the traps. All the final answers were given in the beginning. They stand shining, above and beyond us, but they are always there to be seen. They may be too bright for us, they may be too clear for us. Well then, we must clarify our own eyes. Our task is to grow out until we reach them."

Statement from Zen Studies Society Posted by Philip Ryan in : Zen , 4 commentsLast week we indicated we’d contacted the Zen Studies Society (ZSS) regarding Eido Shimano Roshi’s status at the organization. The President of ZSS’s board sent the following statement in response:

We are grateful beyond words for the incomparable gift of Eido Roshi’s Dharma treasure, and for his unstinting efforts to root Rinzai Zen Buddhism in American soil. Ever at home in the unconditional realm he spurs us to go beyond the relative vista.

Nevertheless, we cannot ignore the world of causation.

On July 4, 2010, Eido Shimano Roshi stepped down from the board of directors of the Zen Studies Society (ZSS). This was prompted by allegations of clergy misconduct. The ZSS is committed to fully investigating, clarifying and bringing resolution to this matter. Eido Roshi’s wife, Aiho-san Shimano, also stepped down from the Board at that time.

It was with deepest gratitude and respect for their years of service to this organization and their humble effort to assist us in honestly processing this matter and preparing us for their transition from temporal authority, that we accepted their resignations from the ZSS Board.

After discussion with senior members of the American Zen Teachers Association, the ZSS’s board has decided to seek outside professional assistance to move this process forward with openness and compassion for all.

We thank the ZSS board for their openness and prompt response and we wish them all the best going forward.

UPDATE: In response to further questions (see comments below), the Board writes: “While Eido Roshi has resigned from the Board, he remains abbot of NYZ and DBZ. Internal discussions continuing.”

On September 3, 1992, I arrived alone at Dai Boatsu Zendo with much anticipation. This was to be my first experience at a Buddhist monastery and I naively did not know what to expect. I looked forward to zazen, Buddhist studies, Dokusan, and koan study with Eido Roshi. He had been highly recommended as a great teacher by my well respected peers and instructors in XXXXXXX.

From the very beginning, I felt Eido Roshi "noticing" me. He would often stop me in the hall or call me into his meeting room to give me a small gift, I assumed he was this way with everyone. However, my assumptions changed the first night o f Dokusan during Golden Wind sesshin when he pulled me toward him and kissed me on the mouth! He said, "The first time I saw you, something clicked into place for me. Perhaps something will happen between us in the future... hmmm?" This was the first time physical contact had occurred between us. This same behavior continued during 80% of subsequent Dokusans, but he progressed from hugging and kissing me to touching my breasts. At one point, he told me that he wanted to make love with me. I told him, "No." He looked directly in my eyes and said " don’t wait too long." I experienced his statement as a veiled threat that he would abandon me spiritually and emotionally if I did not comply with his wishes. So, due to my own weakness and fear, I did as he wanted. At the end of "Dokusan" he would make a date with me to visit him in his quarters that night where we would have sexual intercourse, He made it clear to me that no one was to see me entering his quarters as it would cause him "a lot of trouble."

During three different occasions I expressed my concern to him that I was deceiving my dear friends, XXXXXX and XXXXX, and my fiance, XXXXXX. I told him that I wanted to tell them because I did not feel right about keeping a deliberate secret of this magnitude. He said, "Lie" I was literally sick after he said this. I felt poisoned. On one hand, I did not want to cause trouble for him, and on the other hand, something was extremely wrong for me! This miserable affair lasted until I left, the zendo on December 11. 1992.February 21, 2010 10:23 PM

If any of you fine folk at Treeleaf, and I believe there are many, want to take a peek into what someone very close to you has been up to recently, take a VERY CLOSE look at comments to Gniz's post, "Genpo and Jundo are not one the same." I think you might recognize one of the trolls over there.

Some of you may think all of this dharma soap opera is a modern or american thing.

These are from a discussion about Shen Hui over on ZFI:About Shen Hui:

"For him to say he cared nothing for his own life is a laugh! He wanted that robe and lineage for his own. He wanted to be the seventh patriarch. Later in his life he was involved in selling ordinations. Wanna be a monk? Pay enough and we'll ordain you on this platform, right here in this square!

The An Lu-shan rebellion broke out along the northern tier of provinces, and the T'ang dynasty government needed to raise revenue very quickly to finance the military campaigns needed to quell it. At this time, Shen-hui demonstrated a great talent for inducing people to seek ordination, for which they needed ordination certificates from the government. By charging a fee for these certificates, which carried with them an exemption from further taxation and military service, the government was able, with Shen-hui's help, to raise the capital needed to defend the dynasty and retake the fallen capital. He was rewarded with a temple of his own near the capital and imperial patronage; ironically, he had criticized Shen-hsiu for receiving these very things, claiming that the master had sold out the true Dharma for 30 pieces of silver."

Then there's this from another site by Vladimir K on the Northern vs Southern Chan split:

"Although history has, in a sense, vindicated Shen-hui’s position, in many respects he was, at best, a questionable (though highly effective) evangelist for Ch’an. He was not above making up stories to promote Hui-neng and his “school”. He claimed that Bodhidharma and all subsequent masters in the lineage taught the Diamond Sutra rather than the Lankavatara Sutra, a claim Yampolsky (1967:34) dismisses as “pure fabrication.” Dumoulin (1994:113- 114) called him “unscrupulous” in his attacks on the Northern School. Shen-hui accused Northern School practitioners of attempting to steal Bodhidharma’s robe, trying to cut off the head of Hui-neng’s mummified body, effacing Hui-neng’s tomb inscription and altering the inscription on Shen-hsiu’s stele to call him the Sixth Patriarch (Yampolsky, 1967:28-29; Dumoulin, 1994:113-114) He also claimed that he was a tenth stage bodhisattva, a claim Poceski judges as “outrageous”."

Wow. Selling ordination certificates. Is this any different than charging for Big Mind seminars?To support the military too. What if Genpo gave his money from Big Mind seminars to George Bush to finance his invasion of Iraq?Does Jundo claim that he's a 10th stage bodhisattva? As the dharma turns.

Look to your heart, son. Your Mama and I know you have abandonment issues. Come home. We did a bad, bad thing (OK we do that often, ...blush!). Enlighten us with your wisdom, son, we are sad old fornicators.